Monday, January 28, 2013

The Adventure of the Haunting that led to the Riddle of the Travelling Skull

It was obvious, when I was stopped by the Russian, that no good would
come of our encounter. For what good has ever come from a Russian stopping a
person on the street, especially one of Polish descent? The person that is, not
the street. But the Russian did stop me, and a conversation did take place. For
I was not expecting anything out of the ordinary. Alas! At that time I knew
nothing about Harry Stephen Keeler, nor the Dutchman, nor the mysterious Ramble
House and the strange goings-on in the blogosphere.

I knew the Russian. Sergey, I believe his name was, and an informant he
had become for everyone over the last several years. For he seemed to know
everything. All one had to do was to stop him and ask him a question, and
answer it he would. And over time, as these things tend to happen, people began
to call him "the Russian" or "the Gogol." I knew not the
reason for this nickname, but it seemed to fit him.

“Well,” I replied, “I suppose I could spare some time. For I wasn’t
doing anything in particular. As a matter of fact, I was heading back home to
read my brand-new book, The Purple Parrot by Clyde B. Clason. But if you
want something, I suppose my literary endeavours can wait.” And with that, I
tucked Mr. Book back under my coat.

“Thanks,” I replied perfunctorily. And with that I walked off. The
Russian muttered: “Nasodm sgoierlt zoijwelrknm, lkns lox$zq nops are twu!!!”
The rudeness of his language shocked me, and confirmed that I I had no desire
to extend our conversation. The news was not of the sort with which I wished to
be greeted. For it meant one thing and one thing only: the ghost of Harry
Stephen Keeler was back to haunt the blogosphere.

Perhaps I should explain. For you might not be a citizen of the
Internet, and this might all be new to you. For I run a blog entitled At the
Scene of the Crime where I produce the finest reviews of mystery novels on
the planet. In fact, I had just secured a contract from someone in my
neighbourhood to purchase a box of 81 Erle Stanley Gardner novels within the
next week, all due to be reviewed in good time. With my spirits high, knowing
the future reading material formy blog to be secure, I had gone to the bookstore
and purchased The Purple Parrot. But upon finding out that I had been beaten
to the punch by the Dutchman, who himself is a blogger, I wished nothing more
than to throw Mr. Book out of my sight and never to gaze upon him again!

Harry Stephen Keeler himself

But of course, why should the Dutchman choose to review the very book I
had just purchased? There was only one reasonable, sane, and utterly logical
explanation to it all—the ghost of Harry Stephen Keeler had told him to do so! This
thought was maddening. For I thought that I had dealt with Keeler’s ghost
before. And he had been banished! But in my pride I must have failed to take
some loophole into account, and now the ghost had returned to haunt the blogs,
perpetually seeking wild coincidences, and creating them when he could not find
any to satiate his thirst!

But I did not lose all hope right away. For I knew that time was on my
side. The Dutchman had only just reviewed my book – surely I could squeeze some
information out of him and find out what the ghost of Keeler was up to! I must find out! And so I went knocking at
the door of the estate of the Dutchman, the Baron Ferdinand Christiaan van
Aalsmeerderbrug tot Zwammerdam, which was luckily just down the block. The
estate, I mean, and not the Baron Ferdinand Christiaan van Aalsmeerderbrug tot
Zwammerdam. For the Baron Ferdinand Christiaan etcetera was not at home. For
when I opened the door, I was greeted by a leering human skull, its eyes
ablaze!

I instantly recognized the glare as belonging to Keeler, and I lunged at
the skull. But I, alas, was too late! Keeler had recognized me and had fled. I
was left holding Mr. Skull by what had once been the jawbone. The red glare I
had noticed before was nowhere to be found, and when I examined Mr. Skull I
could not see any mechanical trickery by which the glow could have been
achieved. Truly, this skull had been something of a campfire for Keeler’s ghost
until he had vacated the premises a few minutes ago.

That was when the Baron (Etcetera) walked in. I recognized him immediately
as the Dutchman and stared accusingly at him. “What is this doing here?”

The Dutchman leered at me. “You’ll never get me to tell you!”

“Tell me what?” replied I. “That Keeler
is back?”

He shrank away in terror. “So you know?”

“Yes, and I will rid the blogosphere of his presence once and for all.”

The Dutchman knew that he had betrayed Keeler’s location. And there was
nothing he could do about it.

“The Ramble House?” I asked. “Is that where he’s hiding out?”

The Dutchman noddedsomberly. I decided not to press the matter
further and abandoned him, heading to the Ramble House. It was a large and
terrifying building on the west side of the Internet. Its architecture was
gloomy and Gothic, and whenever lightning flashed, the house seemed to be
leering evilly. It was like a—like an evil omen of doom, rising from the
shadows to swallow you up. But I rather liked the place.

But this was no time to admire the structure. Inside I went, shutting
the door softly behind me. I attempted to turn on the lights. Nothing. But a
voice whispered out to me:

“Are you here for the ghost of Harry Stephen Keeler?”

I gulped before replying. “I am indeed. For it is my duty to rid the
blogosphere of Keeler’s ghost!”

There came a cackle. “And how do you think you will accomplish this? The
Ramble House is a veritable fortress for Keeler! This is a sanctuary for his
work, all being preserved for posterity. How do you propose to destroy him?”

I pursed my lips. “There’s only one way to do it, I suppose. I must read
one of his books.” And with that, I reached my hand out blindly, sinking it
into the dark, feeling for a book. My hand resurfaced with The Riddle of the
Travelling Skull. I could not see the title due to thedarkness, but somehow I knew from
feel alone that this was the book that I had picked up.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to do that.” My interlocutor was adamant.

“Who are you?” I retorted.

“I am the keeper of Keeler. Well, one of them. It’s my shift right now,
but Nevins is due here in an hour to replace me.”

“And how are you going to stop me?” I asked.

“Simple.” Another laugh. “I will simply refuse to turn on the
electricity. Without any source of light, how could you possibly read a single
word?”

I grinned. Now was the time to play my ace of spades. “Ah, but you
forgot one very important detail. This book I hold in my hand is undoubtedly The
Riddle of the Travelling Skull… But it is on my Kindle Paperwhite!” With
that, I turned on the screen. The comforting light caressed me, while Mr.
Voice, whoever he was, shrieked. The cries became dimmer and fainter, and I
surmised that he had fled out of fear.

And thus I began to read! I read of a skull with a bullet hole through
it, stuffed with torn papers and with the bullet inside. It was inside of a
bag, and a German had mixed up two similar-looking bags. One contained innocent
travelling gear, the other carried Mr. Skull. Our hero, Clay Calthorpe walked
away with the wrong bag, the one with the skull in it, and only made the grisly
discovery back at home.

Before long, Clay had been assaulted by a Chinaman and robbed of the
skull. To recover it, he went on a merry little goose chase throughout Chicago, searching for a
poetess named Abigail Sprigge and trying to win the hand of his true love back,
for his future father-in-law had suddenly forbidden the marriage! All the
while, his friend was due to have a throat operation, and Clay kept
interrupting the story in order to bring us more of Abigail Sprigge’s poems,
which somehow tied into the whole story.

Here, at last, was a master of language, one who realized that grammar
was only a set of guidelines. For far too long, it had kept authors in its
steel grasp, but Keeler had finally outwitted the hand of Fate and had mastered
a style of his own! Some might call it incomprehensible gibberish, but such
Philistines cannot know the true nature of art! Indeed, I might call it the
best, most revolutionary novel I have ever read.

Below, Keeler faithfully transcribes the dialogue of a black man named (of
all things) Sandy
MacDougall. He has just managed, in 20 minutes, to put a torn-up letter
together:

“Huh—didn’ need to do all dat. Dem whut had
typenwritin’ on dem wuz kinda blue-white papah—whilst dem odders widout no
typenwritin’ was white-white papah. Des pluck ’em all out by de colah—lak mah
Grandaddy he pick cotton.”

Or how about after Clay discovers the travelling skull (which has a
plate inside of it, labeled with the number 82)? He extracts papers stuffing
the skull’s brain, and then proceeds to go into bat-shit crazy mode:

“'Number 82,' I said, 'I don’t exactly relish that look on your face.
But I can’t help but wonder what kind of look will be on your master’s
face—when he gets you back—your master who was reading Deuteronomy—or
Genesis—on a Broadway car! For undoubtedly,' I went on to the leering skull, 'if
he doesn’t get my handbag open tonight, with a bundle of extra keys of his own
from some cabinet or closet or tool drawer, and find those 7 or 8 cards of
mine, with that rubber band about ’em, and "The Essex" printed on
’em, he’ll put an ad in the paper about you. So back you go—paper stuffing and
all. For you can’t sit on my chiffonier, baby—not for a single minute. Back
you—' (…) However, I forgot my feelings. For the time being. For I had to make
up a new brain stuffing for No. 82. Which was not very difficult.”

Keeler was also a master of the colourful expression:

“Within two shakes of a lamblet’s tail, we had drawn up to a curb off
from an arched stone doorway over which hung two purple lights that reminded
me, somehow, of two great Julu berries.”

And for that matter, a master of names. Keeler certainly knew how to
name his characters. We have a black man named Sandy Macdougall. We have a
Chinaman named Ichabod Chang. We have a brain specialist named George McBean.
We even have a missionary to the Philippines named Sophie
Kratzenschneiderwümpel!

What a maestro!

But Keeler did more than just revolutionize the language of the mystery
story. He anticipated the future of the genre when he realized that plots are
not meant to be logical. But his solution was unique. He required a complex
webwork of plots that kept interrupting each otherso that they flowed into each other
and it became impossible to distinguish where one plot began and another ended.
Everything made perfect sense in the peculiar universe created by Keeler, but
only because it was Keelerland, where the story of an attempted murder could be
interrupted by a physics lecture!

What an artist! I read on, amazed at what had been created. This
elevated the genre to a whole new level. It truly transcended the genre, offering heights of absurdity never before
imagined and never since matched. And somehow, all this wildly absurd
inventiveness, a veritable hodge-podge of elements, managed to rekindle in me a
spark of enthusiasm: the same spark that had caused me to start my blog. The
same spark that kept me reading mysteries even through the depths of overrated
mediocrity. Keeler had created something unique!

And then I saw it. What a fool I had been! For the ghost of Harry
Stephen Keeler has never intended to take over the blogosphere. He has had only
one goal in mind: to take over my
blog, to force me to review his books. Fool that I was, I had walked right into
the gilded honey-trap like a ball in a roulette wheel, unable to change my
destiny!

But when I closed the book, I knew that Keeler had won. For I knew that
one thing remained, and it is now that I finish. My adventure with The
Riddle of the Travelling Skull had shown me the light, and now it was time
to spread the luminescence around to other blogs. As we well learned in high
school physics, light must shine through even the deepest dark.

**********

Notes: Harry Stephen Keeler is undoubtedly one of the
most fascinating people to ever pen a mystery novel. In Gun in Cheek, an affectionate chronicle of the worst mystery
stories ever written, Bill Pronzini describes Keeler as “the once-popular ‘wild
man’ of the mystery, who seems to have been cheerfully daft and whose plots
defy logic and the suspension of anyone's disbelief”. To put it simply, Keeler
couldn’t write. His grammar breaks free from the iron grip of English 101
instructors all over the world, and the logic of his tales is… well, porous, to put it nicely. But there is a
lively energy to The Riddle of the
Travelling Skull, and no matter how insane it gets it somehow makes for a
terrific reading experience. This is one of those rare books that are so bad they
are actually very fun to read. I had an uproarious time reading it and laughed
out loud several times. If you have a sense of humour and want to dip yourself
into something that is bat-shit crazy, you really can’t do much better than
Keeler.

You can buy much of Keeler’s work online through Ramble House. They offer
print editions, but can also do e-editions. I purchased a few books to read on
my Kindle, including this one. As e-books go, it’s perfectly fine, and was sold
to me at an extremely
reasonable price. Ramble House also offers other books for sale (many of them by
very good authors): click
here to go to a complete list.

Many thanks to Barry Ergang for looking over this review, shaking his
head, and then wading through the landmines of crappy grammar, trying to
distinguish the deliberate errors from the typos.

Finally, a very big thank you to Bill Pronzini, who recommended Keeler
to me. I’m delighted to report that Keeler offers all the delights that are
advertised in Gun in Cheek, and for
the reader willing to wade through his prose, it offers a goldmine of entertainment.
It isn’t the same type of entertainment that you will find in a good book, but
that shouldn’t make it any less valid as entertainment.

I'm glad you enjoyed this tale of nonsense. It was certainly one of the most fun reviews to write for the last few months.

SKULL has a peculiar logic all of its own, with the characters somehow convinced that logically, if they find the poetess they'll find out who stuffed the skull and thus they'll find out... actually, I don't know what they wanted to find out. I mean, clearly a "Chinaman" stole the skull from Clay, why not go after him, find out who he was? Nah. Poetry is much better. And each poem is called one of the greatest ever by the narrator, who claims not to like poetry. It's a book that it might be possible to summarize, but it would take several pages.

Mr. Pronzini, thanks so much for stopping by -- reading your comment really made my day. I'm very glad that you enjoyed this review, which after all was largely inspired by your work in GUN IN CHEEK. :)

If Richard Polt were still running his annual Imitate Keeler Contest at the HSK Society website you'd be a shoo-in for a top prize. One of the best Keeler parodies I've read. So glad you have finally cracked the pages of the great Keeler after all those references to his spirit over the years. Hope you find more to your liking. I recommend GREEN JADE HAND, SING SING NIGHTS, FIND THE CLOCK, THIEVES' NIGHTS, and THE WASHINGTON SQUARE ENGIMA (which is the most straightforward of his mysteries, though you will never solve it).

Gosh, I hope not. Although I think there's been silence from that general direction for a few days now, so it might just be another coincidence engineered by The Master.

John, I'm glad that you liked this review. It was a bit of a challenge trying to parody Keeler, since the work itself is a bizarre sort of self-parody, but I'm really pleased with the result! It would've been nice to submit it to the Imitate Keeler Contest, but I was completely unaware of him back in 2008! Still, I'm glad I finally succumbed and discovered Keeler for myself. And as it happens, I already have a copy of SING SING NIGHTS, although it'll probably take me a while to get to reading it.

No, no, there have been no impact zones near my abode, John, I was occupied elsewhere and I don't recognize myself in the baron at all. But yes, I should’ve responded a loot sooner. Mea culpa, etc. Great stuff though, Patrick! However, I doubt we've seen the last of Keeler's ghost on this side of the blogosphere!

Glad you enjoyed this one, TomCat! And of course, if Keeler pops up on the blogosphere once again, I suppose I'll just have to read another of his books. As bad as it is it's marvelously entertaining stuff.

I bought about 50 ebooks from Fender. He sent me one extra ebook as a gift. Guess what was the title?

I think you will definitely can answer it. ;)

Fender is a very easy to deal with. He gave very big discounts and I can tell him anytime after purchase if there is any problems with any ebooks that I will encounter in the future and he will fix it for me! Very generous! Will definitely buy from him in the future! He's a nice guy.

Lin, I agree, Fender is a great guy. I double checked whether he was okay with my using the "Ramble House" as a location in this review/parody/fantasy, and not only did he approve, he sent me some fascinating info about Keeler's own use of "Ramble House". I was also quite pleased with the e-book's quality and the very reasonable price tag. I'll probably become a bit more regular a customer of the sinister Ramble House. :)

I have about 90 of Ramble House's 300 or so titles converted into EPUB and MOBI format at this time. About 30 of those are Keelers. Generally, I let an order for a title inspire me to do the conversion, and they're slowly getting converted. So ALL of the Keeler novels (except THE SIGN OF THE CROSSED LEAVES) are available in book or ebook format, if I'm inspired.

The review was terrific. My thoughts on which Keelers to read first are at http://www.ramblehouse.com/wheretostart.htm

Thanks for commenting, Fender. You do a great service to us mystery fans with Ramble House, so we all thank you very much for taking the time to convert stuff into e-book formats when asked. (I know that, for myself, e-books make it ten times easier for me to read a book, especially when I worked full-time in Toyota during the summer, which I'm planning to do once again this year.)

Glad you liked the review, and thanks for the link. It's a very useful article for anyone who wants to take the plunge and subject themselves to the delights of Keelerland.

Due to a recent resurgence in spam messages, I have disabled anonymous commenting. I realize this may be annoying to some users who do not wish to sign up for a Google account, but this is the easiest way for me to deal with spam and still have comments appear in a timely manner.